UC Berkeley Web Feature

BERKELEY – Responding
to departmental requests for more time to make needed software
changes, Information Systems & Technology is postponing
plans for a mass migration of UCLink accounts to the campus's
new e-mail system.

Rather than move all UCLink accounts to the new CalMail system
on Sunday, Jan. 11, as planned, IS&T has pushed the mandatory
switchover back to Saturday, Jan. 17. In the interim, UCLink
users will be able to opt for voluntary self-migration, allowing
them to switch to CalMail at their own pace beginning Monday
morning, Jan. 12. It also means the UCLink-wide outage previously
scheduled for Jan. 11 will now occur on Jan 17.

Under the self-migration process, users will follow links
from the UCLink and BearMail home pages that will allow them
to set up their new accounts on CalMail.

Users will log into the UCLink "Manage Your Account" section,
using their current UCLink account name and password, and then
will be able to begin the conversion to CalMail. Once the new
account is established, users will be prompted to change some
configuration settings on their e-mail clients, and then will
be able to
make full use of the new CalMail system.

The change to voluntary migration also will allow departmental
tech support staffs to make configuration changes for users
who are unable to do so themselves. And it will buy time to
upgrade e-mail clients for those UCLink customers whose older
software will not work properly with the new CalMail system
unless reconfigured or upgraded. (The main such problem client
identified so far is Eudora version 5.1 and 5.2.0 for PCs running
on Windows; Eudora for the Macintosh, as well as Eudora 5.2.1
and newer for Windows, are not affected.)

After the weekend switchover was announced late Wednesday,
the CalMail team was peppered with requests for a delay, accompanied
by complaints that the tight timetable didn't leave enough
time for IT staffs to check and potentially modify all the
machines in their departments before the Sunday deadline. The
CalMail team, which had put the conversion on the fast track
in order to keep potential problems from extending past the
beginning of spring term on Jan. 20, devised the self-migration
path as a way to balance both needs.

The voluntary migration period will last for only a week;
all accounts that have not been converted by their owners will
be switched over to the new CalMail system en masse on Saturday,
Jan. 17. UCLink and CalMail accounts will be unavailable from
8 a.m. to 4 p.m. that day while the conversion takes place.